Rebecca Walsh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813060514
- eISBN:
- 9780813050683
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813060514.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter makes the case for the interplay between modernist poetry and academic and popular geography from the late nineteenth century to the early 1940s. It develops the term geopoetics to ...
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This chapter makes the case for the interplay between modernist poetry and academic and popular geography from the late nineteenth century to the early 1940s. It develops the term geopoetics to capture the transnational geographical orientation of the work by American poets the book considers and to reflect the geopolitical dimensions of modernist poetry’s “mixing up” of conventional global geography. It also argues for a more prominent place for the genre of poetry in discussions of transnationalism.Less
This chapter makes the case for the interplay between modernist poetry and academic and popular geography from the late nineteenth century to the early 1940s. It develops the term geopoetics to capture the transnational geographical orientation of the work by American poets the book considers and to reflect the geopolitical dimensions of modernist poetry’s “mixing up” of conventional global geography. It also argues for a more prominent place for the genre of poetry in discussions of transnationalism.
Johannes Riquet
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832409
- eISBN:
- 9780191886324
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832409.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The Aesthetics of Island Space discusses islands as central figures in the modern experience of space. It examines the spatial poetics of islands in literary texts (from The Tempest to The Hungry ...
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The Aesthetics of Island Space discusses islands as central figures in the modern experience of space. It examines the spatial poetics of islands in literary texts (from The Tempest to The Hungry Tide), journals of explorers and scientists (such as Cook and Darwin), and Hollywood cinema (e.g. The Hurricane and King Kong), tracing how islands have offered vivid perceptual experiences as well as a geopoetic oscillation between the poetic energies of words and images and the material energies of the physical world. Its chapters focus on America’s island gateways (e.g. Roanoke and Ellis Island), tropical islands (e.g. Tahiti and imagined South Sea islands), the islands of the Pacific Northwest, and mutable islands (e.g. the volcanic and coral islands in Wells’s fiction). The book argues that the modern voyages of discovery posed considerable perceptual challenges to spatial experience, and that these challenges were negotiated via the poetic engagement with islands. Postcolonial theorists maintain that islands have been imagined as geometrical abstractions subjected to the colonial gaze. There is, however, a second story of islands in the Western imagination which runs parallel to this colonial story: the experience of islands in the age of discovery also went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of global space. Rethinking (post-)phenomenological, geocritical, and geopoetic theories, The Aesthetics of Island Space suggests that the modern encounters with islands as mobile and shifting territories implied a diversification of spatial experience, and explores how this disruption is registered and negotiated by non-fictional and fictional responses.Less
The Aesthetics of Island Space discusses islands as central figures in the modern experience of space. It examines the spatial poetics of islands in literary texts (from The Tempest to The Hungry Tide), journals of explorers and scientists (such as Cook and Darwin), and Hollywood cinema (e.g. The Hurricane and King Kong), tracing how islands have offered vivid perceptual experiences as well as a geopoetic oscillation between the poetic energies of words and images and the material energies of the physical world. Its chapters focus on America’s island gateways (e.g. Roanoke and Ellis Island), tropical islands (e.g. Tahiti and imagined South Sea islands), the islands of the Pacific Northwest, and mutable islands (e.g. the volcanic and coral islands in Wells’s fiction). The book argues that the modern voyages of discovery posed considerable perceptual challenges to spatial experience, and that these challenges were negotiated via the poetic engagement with islands. Postcolonial theorists maintain that islands have been imagined as geometrical abstractions subjected to the colonial gaze. There is, however, a second story of islands in the Western imagination which runs parallel to this colonial story: the experience of islands in the age of discovery also went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of global space. Rethinking (post-)phenomenological, geocritical, and geopoetic theories, The Aesthetics of Island Space suggests that the modern encounters with islands as mobile and shifting territories implied a diversification of spatial experience, and explores how this disruption is registered and negotiated by non-fictional and fictional responses.
Johannes Riquet
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832409
- eISBN:
- 9780191886324
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832409.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Drawing on (post-)phenomenological and geopoetic perspectives, the introduction explains the book’s interest in considering islands at the intersection of material and poetic production on the one ...
More
Drawing on (post-)phenomenological and geopoetic perspectives, the introduction explains the book’s interest in considering islands at the intersection of material and poetic production on the one hand, and aesthetic experience of the phenomenal world on the other. It suggests that the modern experience of islands in the age of discovery went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of understanding global space, and that fictional and non-fictional representations of islands negotiate these perceptual challenges. It thereby explains how The Aesthetic of Island Space complicates the common account of islands as discrete shapes, geometrical abstractions, and easily understandable images. Instead, it foregrounds the importance of water, mobility, and a range of dynamic geo(morpho)logical and poetic processes in the figuration of islands. The introduction ends by discussing the significance of considering islands in relation to an ‘aesthetics of the earth’ (DeLoughrey and Handley) and a poetics of the material world.Less
Drawing on (post-)phenomenological and geopoetic perspectives, the introduction explains the book’s interest in considering islands at the intersection of material and poetic production on the one hand, and aesthetic experience of the phenomenal world on the other. It suggests that the modern experience of islands in the age of discovery went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of understanding global space, and that fictional and non-fictional representations of islands negotiate these perceptual challenges. It thereby explains how The Aesthetic of Island Space complicates the common account of islands as discrete shapes, geometrical abstractions, and easily understandable images. Instead, it foregrounds the importance of water, mobility, and a range of dynamic geo(morpho)logical and poetic processes in the figuration of islands. The introduction ends by discussing the significance of considering islands in relation to an ‘aesthetics of the earth’ (DeLoughrey and Handley) and a poetics of the material world.
Johannes Riquet
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832409
- eISBN:
- 9780191886324
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832409.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The texts examined in Chapter 4 explore islands in geo(morpho)logical space-time. The chapter begins by discussing how the relational poetics of Darwin’s and Wallace’s writings ask readers to ...
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The texts examined in Chapter 4 explore islands in geo(morpho)logical space-time. The chapter begins by discussing how the relational poetics of Darwin’s and Wallace’s writings ask readers to reimagine planetary space as a discontinuous multiplicity of shifting islands. The notion of a geopoetic resonance between the material energies of the physical world and the poetic energies of language guides the analyses of three literary responses to Darwin, Wallace, and their successors. H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and ‘Aepyornis Island’ (1894) figure islands as beleaguered territories haunted by the spectre of human extinction. However, their geopoetic descriptions of volcanism and coral suspend these evolutionary narratives. A century later, Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide explores the radical poetic implications of Darwin and Wallace’s archipelagic thinking. In the novel, the human element intersects with other living forms, physical geography, and textual spaces to form a mutable landscape shaped by conflicts.Less
The texts examined in Chapter 4 explore islands in geo(morpho)logical space-time. The chapter begins by discussing how the relational poetics of Darwin’s and Wallace’s writings ask readers to reimagine planetary space as a discontinuous multiplicity of shifting islands. The notion of a geopoetic resonance between the material energies of the physical world and the poetic energies of language guides the analyses of three literary responses to Darwin, Wallace, and their successors. H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and ‘Aepyornis Island’ (1894) figure islands as beleaguered territories haunted by the spectre of human extinction. However, their geopoetic descriptions of volcanism and coral suspend these evolutionary narratives. A century later, Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide explores the radical poetic implications of Darwin and Wallace’s archipelagic thinking. In the novel, the human element intersects with other living forms, physical geography, and textual spaces to form a mutable landscape shaped by conflicts.
